


Schematics to Your Brain

by sphinxscribe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6557389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphinxscribe/pseuds/sphinxscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Sam stumble on a backpack of notebooks in a warehouse basement in Kiev.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Schematics to Your Brain

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Sebastian Stan’s answer as to what his backpack contained.

Something dripped in the darkness. Beneath a buzzing lightbulb, Steve and Sam listened to the metallic _plinks_ that bounced back at them, arrhythmic and unsettling the rigid silence. Ahead of them, pipes ran like roots down a hallway that disintegrated into darkness and a stale, humid smell.

“He’ll have set up near the boiler,” Sam murmured. “Warmer and drier.” His gaze lingered on Steve, wary but resolved with what laid ahead. Steve wasn’t sure he shared his confidence. They’d gotten wind of the Winter Soldier staying in a warehouse basement in Kiev only two hours ago, and the rush to close in hadn’t allowed them backup, nor had it prepared Steve for the reality of seeing his friend after months of cold leads.

“Ready,” Steve said, though he wasn’t. All of his lonely nights poring over Bucky’s dossier and maps of Eastern Europe culminated to this moment, but now that he stared into the darkness where a far door must have led to Bucky’s shelter, he was painfully aware of how unqualified he was.

He started forward, bringing his shield closer to his body as they waded into the shadows. As his eyes adjusted, details emerged—electrical switchboards, caution tape on low-hanging pipes, and the small doorframe at the far end. That was what they were looking for. Sam brought his Glock pistol up before him.

Warm air brushed them when they inched inside. It took a moment for Steve’s eyes to adjust to the oppressive darkness, a moment that Steve knew exposed both him and Sam to attack, but the vulnerability passed eventless. Then Steve found what he was looking for.

Under the low ceiling and by the hulking metal boiler, an abandoned pile of blankets lay on the floor. The flattened middle meant it had once held a resident, and under the bunched blankets at the head, something silver gleamed. Bucky had been here.

“Careful,” Sam warned him as he approached.

Steve flipped the blanket corner to find a small, sheathed knife. As he bent to pick it up, his hands brushed the fabric. It was still warm under his fingertips. He pushed his palm flat against the warmest spot in the middle, as if to seep it up.

“He was here,” he said, his voice rough. “He was here, Sam. Probably five minutes ago.”

There was no way Bucky could have left the building in that time—they would have seen him—he must have been still there—

“Probably less than five.” Sam unearthed a pile of papers buried at the foot—building schematics and a number of dotted maps of Eastern Europe. So Bucky did had a method to the decimated Hydra bases they’d found in Romania and Belarus. “He must have been in a rush if he left these behind.”

A few feet away, Steve spotted another dark lump that looked like a small blanket or a coat. He went to retrieve it and found rough fabric attached to thick straps. A backpack. “He left this behind too.”

Sam looked distinctly uneasy as he gathered the papers and maps into a pile. “So definitely less than five.” He stood to sweep the room’s perimeter, his knuckles tight around his Glock.

Steve ran his fingers down the straps, wondering how Bucky would have wanted to leave all of his mission information behind. Perhaps he’d been startled by their approach when he heard them arrive. But he hadn’t attacked them when they were vulnerable, which must have meant that he didn’t want to fight them…

“He might still be here—we might be able to find him.”

Sam had paused somewhere in the room’s far corner.

“Let’s head back up and see if we can follow a trail—”

“He’s gone,” Sam said suddenly.

“What?”

Steve followed Sam’s voice to find a high window on one of the walls. Its metal frame had been warped like metal fingers had gripped its side and pushed the window out on its hinges. A cool breeze exhaled from the flapping frame, taking the lightness in Steve’s chest with it.

“He has to be somewhere in the area still,” Steve said. “Probably somewhere on the streets—”

“Somewhere in the thousands of buildings in Kiev?” Sam said. “This isn’t the middle of nowhere—there’s no way we’ll find him tonight.”

Steve thought of Bucky in the cold autumn rain, without his backpack or blankets or a place to go. But a part of him knew Sam was right, especially if Bucky just didn’t want to be found.

“It would have been worse if we’d cornered him,” Sam said, as Steve deflated. “He just doesn’t want to be found.”

They shouldn’t have forced him to run. They shouldn’t have come after him.

“What’s in the backpack?” Sam said, gathering Bucky’s maps in his arms. “Explosives?”

Steve unzipped the backpack and found… notebooks. At least four notebooks of varying sizes. He ran his hand down the bottom and found no knives or wires or guns.

“What’s in them?”

Steve opened to a page. In the light from the window, he could make out tiny cursive.

_They didn’t use anesthesia when they cut off my arm. Chained to the table for two? three? days until they made a screw strong enough to hold the metal to my bone—_

Steve reeled. He blinked rapidly and scanned.

_They made me stand on hot coals for hours to see how long it’d take for me to heal—they hung me from chains and whipped me until I lost 40% of my blood—_

_I killed a child in a Moscow orphanage—_

_I blew out the brains of an Italian diplomat in Cairo—_

He flipped the page.

_Steve’s mother ~~aunt?~~ baked apple muffins in their kitchen stove after coming home from the hospital by the drug store._

_I lay bleeding on the snow in the Swiss Alps for hours, waiting—_

_I was naked when they held me down to—_

Steve closed the notebook.

“What is it?” Sam asked quietly.

“Private.”

Though he turned away so Sam wouldn’t see, he felt vaguely nauseous, like he’d been punched in the gut or skipped a step on the stairs. If the scattered vulnerability of the memories were of any indication, the notebooks hadn’t been intended for other eyes. Steve had no place intruding on Bucky’s privacy, however much he’d taken the hunt for Bucky’s torturers into his own hands.

Sam watched him for a while. “You going to take them with you?”

Steve shook his head. Only slightly worse than the thought of the notebooks alone on the floor in the dusty boiler room was the thought of them taken away when Bucky most needed them. Or Bucky leaving them behind in haste. Steve ran his hands over the smooth cover of the abandoned notebook. Perhaps they’d driven him to that.

He tucked the notebooks back into the backpack and zippered it so they wouldn’t fall out. Maybe Bucky would come back tonight, or tomorrow. Steve would make sure they were long gone by then.

“Come on,” Sam said quietly, tapping Steve’s shoulder with Bucky’s maps. “We better see what we can do with these tonight.”

Steve laid the backpack down on the blankets where it’d be easiest to grab. Then he followed Sam out of the warmth of the boiler room, down the shadowy hall, and up the stairs. Only when he was seated in the passenger seat of their rental car did he breathe, and it was something like grief that he exhaled.

They drove off with dotted maps and schematics spread over their laps and the Hydra base in Lviv, Ukraine in their sights. When S.H.I.E.L.D backup came in thirty-two minutes later, they found only the cot of blankets and knife in the boiler room. Steve commed to ask if they’d found anything else of consequence, and they had nothing to report.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on [tumblr](http://sphinxscribe.tumblr.com) @sphinxscribe! I also have a fanfiction.net [account](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4636104/SphinxScribe).


End file.
